What day is it today?

Ok, so I haven’t been writing as frequently as I promised I would, but I didn’t even notice so much time has passed since my last post. This will be a quick tl;dr of what I’ve been up to since (at least of what I can remember).

I went to Portugal for Christmas and New Year’s eve. I stayed in Portugal for about 2 weeks before coming back to Edinburgh. I spent most of my time in Viseu - my hometown - with my family and friends, but I also went to Porto for a couple of days to get together with other friends who live there.

New Year’s eve and Christmas were awesome. I had a very good time with my grandparents, cousins, etc. I ate a lot of good food, and drank a lot of good ‘juice’.

OMG Portuguese food…
OMG Portuguese wine…

After I came back to Edinburgh my timeline got a bit - and what I really mean is very - distorted.

During the first week I found a new place to stay. My new flatmates are 2 french girls - Pauline and Léa, and 4 german girls and guy - Bekki, Conny, Anja, and Tim.

I also got to know the basics of Valkyrie - the robot I’m working on. It’s incredible: there’s a wiki page just to turn it on! BBC came to shoot stuff for one of their TV shows during the second week, and I got to be the one to operate the robot! How cool is that?!

I am still finishing PDIS - a Dissertation Planning course from Portugal that I am taking remotely. I am preparing a presentation you can find here http://bit.ly/pdis-final-ferrolho, and I am about to start writing the literature review of my Masters Thesis - and yes, that’s the reason why I remembered to update the blog. #ProcrastinationGoals

Other than that I have been pretty much learning a lot - and I do mean a lot. I’ve been reading robotics papers and learning a lot of concepts from all the interactions I have been having with researchers from the university. In fact, I feel like I am getting dumber every day. I am surrounded by very talented people, and the more I speak with them the more I realize that ‘wow, I have so much to learn’, or ‘let me just go read the paper about that stuff so I can keep up with this conversation’.

Anyway, I have been getting by, even though I no longer know exactly what day it is each day. I know when it is Wednesay because we always have a group meeting on Wednesdays. I know when it is Friday because we always go have dinner at Teviot on Fridays. Otherwise, I really don’t care anymore. I am enjoying my time here much more this semester, and what I am doing is much more exciting.

Cool! I think I’m done for this post. Now off I go writing the start of my Masters Dissertation.